Tuesday, January 20, 2009

From the Extended Weekend That Was

Pittsburgh wins the AFC Championship and will have enough players left to play in the Super Bowl. I still think the Ravens/Titans game the week before was more violent than this one, but that's like saying Death Wish 2 was more violent than Death Wish 3. Either way, lots of people probably took a solid 20 minutes just trying to get out of bed. And it had this hit, while scary after the fact, was one of the hardest I've seen maybe ever:

And it reminded me of this hit on Roscoe Parrish, which led to Parrish having INTERNAL BLEEDING shortly thereafter. Yes, INTERNAL BLEEDING. Like the kind people get when they've been in car wrecks.

The Arizona Cardinals win and the NFL will begin NBA-like playoff refereeing next season to prevent this from happening again. Seriously, the NFL will not put up with the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl ever again. David Stern will be hosting a clinic in the off-season to instruct other commissioners on how to prevent small market teams from making championship games. The clinic will focus on the 2001-02 Sacramento Kings, who most famously were kept out of the NBA Finals in '02.

Incidentally, the last time the Cardinals made the Super Bowl was in the early '90s when I guided them there in Tecmo Super Bowl behind the legs of Johnny Johnson. Actually, that was a lie. No one could win with the Cardinals with Tim Rosenbach throwing the ball.

Thank you 2009 preseason college football rankings. If not for this, I'd have to focus on Ole Miss basketball, which isn't much fun to watch right now. The injuries have killed any chance for this team to be any good at all. And now, in addition to Chris Warren, Eniel Polynice and Trevor Gaskins (all out for the year), toss in another injured guard/swingman in Zach Graham. Graham will continue to play through the season with a tear in his patella tendon, but after watching him in the LSU game on Saturday, he's not going to bring much the rest of the way. He wasn't exactly tearing it up, but at this point all Ole Miss needs are healthy bodies so the three guys sitting on the end of the bench don't get in the game.

But one bright spot to look for is Terrico White, who looks like he might be a really good player much faster than I thought he would be. He's the only guy who can really create his own shot (a good shot) and is starting to understand he's got to be the offensive guy to pair with Huertas. My only knock on him right now is that he doesn't create for Huertas like Warren did, but few people can do what Chris Warren can do. And it also helps he's not a natural point guard, so really that's not a knock. More like an item on a wish list.

*24 SPOILER ALERT*

"How can you be so obtuse?" I keep waiting for the White House Chief of Staff (who was the warden in Shawshank Redemption) to say this to the President when she makes another dumb decision. Like, say, sacrificing American lives for citizens in an African country. Good call. Protect your country and countrymen, who voted for you, or save the lives of those in another country who will never vote for you. That choice should have been made in .2 seconds. We haven't seen a President this shaky since Charles Logan. Also, I think the writers of 24 are basically amusing themselves with a female President to show the country this is what the Hillary Clinton administration would have been like had she won.

And I'm pretty sure this season will end with Bauer being locked away and Warden Samuel Norton (or the Chief of Staff) will hand Bauer a Bible between the prison bars and say, "Salvation lies within."

It was also nice to see a male version of Martha Logan launching into a deranged hunt for the truth while ignoring everyone who calls him crazy. Unlike Martha Logan, it doesn't appear that he's on medication nor does it appear he'll live to see the end of the season.

Get a Director of Common Sense/Realism. When the FBI gets ready to send men over to the African Prime Minister's compound, the FBI tactical team heads out the door well before Agent Walker, yet takes a full five minutes longer to get there than it did her. Maybe loading up their gear takes longer, but at least throw us a bone and show them getting ready. It's an incredibly small detail, but after watching Jack Bauer get from one side of Los Angeles to the other in about 7 minutes in a car, these things bother me.